The Original Futurama: The Legacy of the 1939 World's Fair

2010 marks 70 years since the closing of the 1939 New York World's Fair, a far more significant event than its opening. That was the year when a living vision of the future instantly became--to those of us born decades later--a myth. The day the Fair closed marks the end of the world of yesterday and the beginning of the postwar world we still live in today.

Pictures of the World's Fair don't really do it justice. A giant globe, some statues, art-deco buildings marked "Portugal" and "Wonder Bakery." This is what attracted 40-million visitors, including my then-9-year-old grandmother? Did FDR, Einstein and 200,000 others show up on opening day to see the Arctic Girl in her Tomb of Ice?

No, the real draw was the World of Tomorrow. For two seasons, Queens became the crossroads of Earth 2.0, radiating from a blinding white cone and globe--the Trylon and Perisphere. The World of Tomorrow involved a lot of made-up words.

The grounds themselves augured the wondrous world-to-be. The Corona Ash Dump, now Flushing Meadows Corona Park, was "a source of evil odors that threatened asphyxiation to the distressed inhabitants" (this and other quotes are from the greatest book ever written, Official Guide Book: New York World's Fair 1939, Third Edition). It became a verdant field; a city built from nothing, because man felt like it; the prototype of endless sprawling suburban developments conquering all terrains, no matter how inhospitable.

The World of Tomorrow also meant technology. Blanketed with corporate sponsorship, the Fair was history's largest showroom, exposing millions to futuristic devices barely dreamed of. Sure, there were goofy displays like Elektro the Motoman, the 7-foot-tall robot "that talks, sees, smells, sings and counts with his fingers." Or transatlantic travel by "rocketgun." But despite the now-silly showcases (after all, hindsight is 20/20), many of the Fair's offerings actually did fulfill their promise--especially the miracle of television.

My grandmother described this revelation: "Someone asked if I would like to be on television. I'm sure they picked me out because I was a little red-haired girl, and I was wearing what was then called a scotch cap and it had a big green feather in it. They took me to a special set. It was in color, and I thought I was just the cat's pajamas, to use the slang of the time."

As she stared at her own flickering image, did she have any inkling that 70 years later her two-bedroom apartment would have three TVs in it and her grandson would make a living from that device? Or did she simply move on to the other miracles around her: electric refrigerators, calculating machines, plexiglass, asbestos (the "magic mineral") and Tampax?

The grandest of all predictions was GM's legendary Futurama, an enormous scale model "city of 1960," which promised a network of national highways for middle-class businessmen to drive home to their wives. (My grandmother said, "I remember waiting on line a long time to get in.") Among the "animated panorama of towns and cities, industrial plants, snow-capped mountains," GM made sure to include "country clubs."

The World of Tomorrow was overwhelmingly suburban. Why else trumpet "The Drug Store of Tomorrow" with its streamlined "Soda Fountain of the Future"? After a decade of Depression, America yearned for the placid and peaceful promise of suburbia.

Other conflicts came sooner. The world of back then wasn't ready for the World of Tomorrow's dream of global community. Over a hundred nations supplied cultural showcase pavilions; these weren't tremendously exciting. Australia's exhibit, "The Story of Wool," was "designed to illustrate the role played by wool as the aristocrat among fabrics." But the exhibits were less important than the people. America's melting pot was really heating up, and it was time for the natives to meet the foreigners who would be jumping in: Japanese, Indian, Brazilian, Russian--almost every country was there.

Only Germany failed to show up, because it was busy taking over Europe. This left a certain purity to the fair--no swastikas to pretend not to see. But it also meant a World's Fair really wasn't the best use of anyone's energy or resources in 1939--especially a Fair that waved the tattered standard of the League of Nations, soon to be nothing but an empty building in Geneva.

That's the secret of the Fair. While New York enjoyed history's greatest carnival, the rest of the world experienced its worst horrors. General Motors and Tampax weren't the only ones with plans for the future. But we can only read these events in the Fair's shadows: the Polish statue of King Jagiello mounted in Central Park, rather than returned to its Nazi-occupied homeland; the legendary restaurant Le Pavillon, staffed by exiles from the French exhibit.

The fair closed forever on Oct. 27, 1940. Nothing like it has existed since, except perhaps Disney World. In a way, we don't need it anymore, because we're living in it. This is the tomorrow they hoped for. And it's all right, I guess: For some reason, "Futurama" still sounds more impressive than "iPod."

The Fair's story isn't quite over. Not to be out-futured, Westinghouse buried a time capsule to be opened in 6939. It's still down there, holding seeds, fabrics, microfilm, a Gillette safety razor, a dollar in change and a pack of Camel cigarettes. But they couldn't preserve the one thing we'd really want from the era: its inhabitants' sense of wonder and hope. That alien faith in man and his ability to build a world. That's buried somewhere deeper, forever irretrievable. I often wish I could travel back to 1939 and watch my grandmother and those other millions marvel at the World of Tomorrow, while I, in turn, marvel at the world of yesterday.

Elliott Kalan is a writer for The Daily Show and co-founder of the comedy group the Hypocrites.

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